If you're not a writer or don't frequent writing sites, this post won't mean much to you. But if you are a writer that hangs out on writing sites, I'm sure you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

Someone wondered how the misidentification of passive voice started, this was my answer:

My guess is at some point someone said, "Hey, a lot of your sentences are passive, for fiction you should use more active sentences." And they were like, "Passive?" "You know instead of She was bitten by the dog say The dog bit her." And they saw the lack of "was" as the difference between those two sentences and went forth to spread the word that "was" is evil. So armed with this new found knowledge, these internet warriors scratched out sentences like "She was running out of time" and replaced them with "She ran out of time" because it's more "active" ignoring it no longer makes sense. Or if they realize it doesn't make sense, something super awkward like "She began to run out of time." As people killed off the wases ruining their great literature, they realized right next to them were -ing words. Those were also removed when the sentence was fixed, so clearly those were bad too. Then someone somewhere saw verbs with -ing were gerunds and therefore their foe had a name! (even though it's only a gerund when being used as a noun so actually applies to zero percent of the cases they are against)So they decided, in the name of good literature, the gerunds and the wases must be destroyed! And then self-publishing got big and people needed platforms. But other people didn't care what they had to say...unless they were teaching writing. So taking their shoddy knowledge, they made blog posts, which they later turned into e-books. And the grossly incorrect fallacies spread. And now they had authority! It's in a book! It's on a website! It must be true! Sure they could have been spending that time learning about story structure and characterization, but that shit's hard. Easier to do a "find all -ly" in Word. /end rant

Great read. Spot on. I know exactly what you're talking about. Now, I don't use too many "was's", but I do like the -ings. I just submitted my first novel, and while doing initial edits (notice I removed the -ing) that was one of my focuses. I had never really heard of that "rule" until I started with Scribophile and had a short pulled through the mud. Too many -ings for the critiquer's liking. Oh, and I like comma's. I apparently don't like short, fragmented sentences, so use comma's. They love putting and, and, and everywhere...

I first heard that in the late 90s when I joined the online writers' group, 'Critters'. One of my first critiques was full of 'this is passive voice' for every was and ing in the story.

I was in the middle of my English degree and studying linguistics as a module, so I knew what passive voice was but pointing it out didn't do any good. And for every time I've pointed it out since (along with other writer friends), it never seems to do any good.

I don't think it will be going away anytime soon. :(

Reply

Leave a Reply.

Subscribe to my newsletter for updates on new releases, free giveaways and promos.

Thank you!

You have successfully joined our subscriber list.

Kayci Morgan

Romance writer and coffee aficionado. Watch her do anything but write.